Subj : Re: How much should I charge for fixed-price software contract? To : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.lisp From : Ulrich Hobelmann Date : Sun Aug 14 2005 06:15 pm Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t wrote: >> From: "Phlip" >> I think Robert has successfully pissed off every head-hunter in town. > > Are you talking about after I patiently waited more than ten years for > even one of them to find me an interview, and finally after more than Maybe you shouldn't have waited for others to come to you. > ten years of their total incompetance, finally I start speaking out in > public and they don't like me telling the world how incompetant they > are? Frankly I don't care if I piss them off at this point. But you should. Nobody cares if they suck or not. This is about you selling yourself to an employer. > Or are you saying that somehow I pissed them off way back in 1991 when > I first started the current sequence of asking them if they can find me > a job because I have just recently (1991.Sep.01) become unemployed > after being steadily employed for ten years? If you're making that > claim, please present evidence of something I said or did way back in > 1991 to piss off all appx. hundred of them such that that's the reason > they haven't gotten me even one interview in all the time from 1991.Sep > until the more recent time when my patience was exhausted and I started > my public complaining about their incompetance. But why do *you* complain about *them*? If they can't get you a job, it's *your* job to do so! Manna doesn't fall from the sky. > My interactions with them during the first several years since I became > unemployed was totally different. I was totally polite and patient. I > never contacted them unless there was a job ad that I wanted to respond > to, except for some cases where I used the Yellow Pages to call them at > random to ask whether they knew of any openings in my area and might be > able to help me find a job. Never a complaint about them for quite a > number of years. I was the total nice guy who is ignored by everyone in > favor of the squeeky wheel that is irritating enough gets noticed. That tells me that you should have made more noise. Maybe you find it irritating. Maybe you despise that kind of people. But nobody cares. They got a job, and you didn't. It's about priorities. > Even now my interactions with them are non-complaining, merely sending > my tailored resume in response to their job ad, and waiting patiently These are claims you make, but I'd like to question how well these resumes are tailored, and how well they're presented. Since you don't have a graphical browser, maybe your word processors aren't too modern, either. (just assuming, maybe I'm wrong here) > for them to respond, and occasionally when I have a new general resume > I FAX it to a whole bunch of them to alert them that I'm still looking > for employment and to get back onto their "hot list" of resumes at the > top of their attention spam, and only one responded in any way, to > complain that they're accepting resumes *only* via MicroSoft word > attachment to e-mail, which I have no way to send from my Unix shell > account, so it took several months before I could find a way to get a > resume to that agency, and then it just went into a black hole. > (Does anybody want the name of that MS-Word-only agency?) Sure, .doc isn't cool, but if it's what everybody wants, you should get used to it. It's your choice to stay out in the rain, but you're complaining about that, so start playing by *their* rules. It's a problem with several dependencies. If you need a PC with MS-Word, get one *before* tackling the job application problem. Good ones are on ebay for cheap. You pay $20 every month for a shell account. What does it do? Some file storage, a C compiler, ...? Great, I bet everybody in this ng and every single CS student has all that on their home computer, running Linux, BSD or whatever. And it even runs a graphical browser. For word processing you can get OpenOffice for free, if they don't accept resumes in TeX. If you need to, live without web access for a year, save the $20 a month, and go buy a decent machine then. It seems that sitting at your shell account, writing news articles here doesn't buy you anything, so save those $20. -- I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it. Dogbert .